


by the shuttered lantern of your eyes

by Solshine



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Era, Grantaire is the human embodiment of the nation of France, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, it's a whole thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22959493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: One warm evening in June of 1831, France wakes up again.He follows the pull of patriotic fervor to a little cafe in St. Michel, and buys a bottle of wine. If he knows anything, he knows that he can't handle revolutions, or revolutionaries, sober anymore.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 123





	by the shuttered lantern of your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> When "Paris Burning" was just starting to be posted, a friend found it and declared their love of the fic prompt. So like a good friend, I two-cakes'ed it for them. Like seven years later, I'm finally cleaning it up and moving it from tumblr to AO3. (As god as my witness, someday I will catch another fandom up to the number of Sherlock fics I wrote back in the day.)

One warm evening in June of 1831, France wakes up again. 

He hasn’t even gotten to sleep that long. He knew after that damnable July Revolution nobody would just let things lie. He had hoped… but of course it has never mattered what he hoped. France climbs down from a lavish painting in the Palais Bourbon (at least it isn’t the statuary this time; those pedestals can be terribly slippery, and the couture usually leaves something to be desired) and ambles out unnoticed into the noisy Paris street.

He is horribly sober. If he knows anything, it is that he can’t do this sober anymore. But France follows his feet to where he is needed—where his name is spoken with iron conviction and bravery is gathered for his sake, damn it all—and prays there is wine there.

—

It is a little café in St. Michel. The faded sign above the door says  _ Le Musain _ and yes, thank God, there is wine within. France goes inside and straight to the bar. He sticks his hand into his pocket, jingles around in the national treasury, and pulls out enough for a bottle. He smiles at the pretty barmaid as she uncorks it and hands it over, but he barely has time to lift it to his lips before he hears a voice ring out from the back corner.

A young man stands over a scarred table, only the tips of his splayed fingers touching it, like the contact is all that’s tethering him down. His golden hair is tumbled all in his eyes that burn like blue flame, and he is speaking France’s name with enough heat and love to wake him all the way from Marseille. 

France despairs. The man is a revolutionary. Of course he is a revolutionary. It would have been too much to ask for him to just be a patriot. 

France has seen a hundred, a thousand men like this, but he wraps his hot fingers around the cool neck of the bottle and can’t help thinking that  _ he’s never seen a man like this,  _ blazing about  _ liberté, égalité, fraternité _ in this slummy little café. It’s a foolish thought, it’s patently untrue. Man! He’s nearly a boy. France has seen leaders before, generals and kings, cardinals and marquis, and even an emperor not that long ago. But oh, that emperor had been nothing like this, sweet and hot and glowing like a tousle-headed sun. 

France is drawn to the back of the café like a man coming in out of the cold is drawn to a fire. He takes a drink. He runs his hand through his hair. He falls in love.

Enjolras pauses in his speechmaking and looks up. He should, it’s only right that he should notice when a nation falls in love with him. But France knows there is nothing for him to see but a disheveled man with a bottle of wine, staring at him in a daze. Their eyes lock, and France knows he must look drunk already, must look practically terrified, clutching his bottle and standing stone still in the middle of the buzzing cafe.

At Enjolras’ pause, the other men follow his gaze and notice the stranger.

“Welcome, brother,” says one of them, and holds out his hand. “Combeferre.”

France pulls his eyes away from Enjolras and manages to focus them on the man smiling at him and offering his hand. He swallows, and shakes it.

“Grantaire,” replies France.

* * *

It’s hard to be in love with someone who’s only in love with what you  _ could _ be. It’s even harder to be in love with a revolutionary, although if you’re France, it amounts to the same thing. He hates every word of Enjolras’ speeches, for all that he can’t stay away.  _ Vive la republiqué  _ grates, but sometimes  _ vive la France _ feels like a curse.

Enjolras is going to die. France—or Grantaire, as those who call themselves  _ Les Amis _ know him now—has seen it too many times to leave any question. The others might survive their leader’s plotting, but Enjolras will not; he is like a patriotic Romeo, determined to die in his lover’s name with or without his lover’s permission.

He certainly does not have France’s permission. Grantaire gets a filthy little flat near the Musain where he goes to have nightmares sometimes about Enjolras’s hair, gilt like the frame of a precious painting, hanging in his face clotted with blood. He dreams less the more he drinks. He drinks a lot. 

God, he hates revolutions.

He almost forgets that, though, when Enjolras speaks. Grantaire doesn’t believe in any of it, of course, but he feels believed in, and that’s nearly as intoxicating as the alcohol. He loves to see Enjolras’s eyes glitter, loves to see him pound the table with his fist, loves to see him smile. He does not smile much except for the sakes of his boys or his France.

He does not smile when Grantaire speaks. Grantaire, to be fair, does not speak of things worth smiling about.   
  
Enjolras does not smile, but he leans forward and gestures fiercely, beautifully, his mouth a line like chiseled stone as he refutes everything Grantaire says. He does not smile when he eases the bottle from Grantaire’s hand late some nights, but his eyes are warm. Grantaire realizes a few months in, when he’s half asleep with his cheek on the table and Enjolras folds up his coat to slip under Grantaire’s head, that at some point he has become an  _ Ami _ , has become one of Enjolras’ men that he takes such good care of, whether he believes in their cause or not. It’s awfully amusing, he thinks, drunkenly nosing a button on Enjolras’ coat. Or amusingly awful. He can’t make up his mind.

One day the boys laughingly insist that they must get Enjolras a girl, and Enjolras murmurs the name “Patria,” and then he does make up his mind. Grantaire bites his lip and hurriedly excuses himself. He goes out to the alley and laughs, and laughs, and laughs until he vomits, and then wipes his mouth with his sleeve and curls up against the wall and cries until he passes out.

He wakes up in the morning, warm if hung over, on a wooden bench inside, a familiar coat under his head.

He returns it to Enjolras that evening, washed clean of Grantaire’s drool.

“This is much too pretty to keep wasting on me,” he smirks as he hands it over. “I’ll just have to start bringing a pillow out with me in the evenings.”

“Or,” says Enjolras, “you could stop drinking so much and manage to go to sleep in your own bed.”. 

“Oh Apollo,” Grantaire laughs. “You can either save France, or save me. You can’t do both.” It is a contradiction that’s only funny to him because he has already made a dent in tonight’s absinthe. He giggles into his bottle, and Enjolras’s face twists in distaste. Enjolras shakes his head and turns away.

The revolutionary opts to save France. Meanwhile, France lurches home early. He wonders how hard it would be to sneak back into the Palais Bourbon and climb back into the painting. He doesn’t think he can stand seeing this—seeing Enjolras—to the end.

* * *

Despite Enjolras’s disgust, Grantaire has grown close to his men. They like him better than Enjolras does, certainly, laughing at Grantaire’s jokes and rambling, sharing his bottles. France tastes in the grapes the vineyards of his countrysides, the green hills soaked with sun, the purple stained fingers of laughing vintners, and pours another round for himself and his friends. Enjolras, who claims he does all this for the countrysides and the vintners too, does not partake.

It is not a secret that Grantaire loves Enjolras, either to Les Amis or, he suspects, to Enjolras himself. He makes no effort to hide it. Once the boys figure it out, they stop teasing their leader about girls, at least in Grantaire’s presence.

One evening they even very unsubtly conspire to leave early one by one until it is just Enjolras and Grantaire left alone. Courfeyrac is the last to leave, his hand on Combeferre’s shoulder as he propels the other man out the door, and he directs a wink at Grantaire as he goes. Grantaire sighs. He appreciates the effort, but they needn’t have bothered; the two of them have ended up alone in the café late at night several times, Enjolras because he stays late working and Grantaire because he stays late drinking and watching Enjolras work. 

Enjolras does not hate Grantaire for lack of exposure to his charms. Enjolras hates him because he looks out the windows of the cafe and hates the France he sees. It’s understandable enough.

He’s not looking out the window now. As soon as the boys start trickling out of the cafe, Enjolras gets out a stack of paper and a stub of lead pencil from a satchel and gets to work on an essay. Grantaire is too far down the table to read it, but he watches Enjolras frown and scribble anyway. It’s not unlike watching your lover ignore you in favor of devotedly penning a love letter you will not be allowed to read.

The metaphor is imperfect, of course. Grantaire isn’t his lover. He figures he owes the boys an effort, though, at least. He scoots down the table, dragging his bottle noisily over its rough surface.    
  
“Hey,” he says. Enjolras does not look up. “Hey.” Enjolras’s eyes flick up at that, mouth pursed and eyebrows bunched in annoyance. Grantaire smothers a grin. 

“What?” Enjolras demands.

“The materials for the cockades. Did Jehan take them with him, or do you have it?”

“It’s here,” says Enjolras, eyeing Grantaire like he’s waiting for a punchline.

“So give it here,” Grantaire laughs.

“You’re drunk,” says Enjolras. “You’d probably run your finger through with a needle.”

“Ridiculous!” scoffs Grantaire. “I could walk a high wire drunk. I could cut a hair lengthwise with a knife drunk.” 

_ I have marched against the Normans drunk. I have watched a man beheaded drunk. I have been beheaded drunk.  _

_ “ _ I can manage a silly cockade,” he assures Enjolras.

Enjolras still looks skeptical, but retrieves a little cotton bag out of his satchel and hands it across the table, then turns back to his essay. Grantaire pulls out a wad of ribbon and a spool of thread with a needle stuck in.

“What are you writing?” he asks, biting off a length of thread.

“Something you’d hate,” says Enjolras. His tone is clipped and his eyes on his paper. Grantaire does not bother explaining that he does not hate Enjolras’s revolutionary fervor. He hates only what it will do.

“I can be quiet and pretend to approve,” Graintaire says mildly.

“It’s nothing. It’s an essay on Rousseau, is all.”

Grantaire barely suppresses his snort. Rousseau, of course, the old sap. Enjolras would. Grantaire shared a bottle of wine with Rousseau once -- the man was a maudlin drunk. They hadn’t gotten along.

“Maybe you’ll convert me this time,” is all he says out loud as he cuts a piece of ribbon with the dull shears from the bag.

Enjolras isn’t foolish enough to believe so, but he hums a little and begins to read from his scribbled papers. Grantaire barely even hears him. He smiles and sews tricolor cockades, and warms himself in front of the fire that is Enjolras. 

His bottle goes untouched for the rest of the night.

* * *

A year passes like the edge of a precipice crumbling under Grantaire’s feet.

The winter comes and thaws. Les Amis start to collect guns. They are all excited, sure of themselves, sure of their cause, sure that the people will join them. But the blood of the people pumps under Grantaire’s skin, the fears of the people boil in his head, and Grantaire knows.

The warmer the days get, the more gunpowder amasses in the back of the Musain, the more Grantaire drinks. He is never sober anymore. When Enjolras looks at him, it is never without pain and hot disappointment. Sometimes in his drunkenness, he still thinks this is hilarious. Sometimes he thinks this is still horrifying. There is very little middle ground.

He keeps his gaze on his bottle more and more during meetings, does not look Enjolras in the eye if he can help it or antagonize the group playfully the way he used to. Enjolras, frustrated, stops trying to engage him, lets him sit in the back of the group with his absinthe and wine.

Grantaire tries to be angry with him. Enjolras is going to get all these boys killed, when they are not his to sacrifice. They are France’s boys if they are anyone’s, Grantaire’s friends, and Enjolras only has custodianship of them for his country. Grantaire does not want to see them die.

And Enjolras! It will hurt to lose Les Amis, but it may ruin Grantaire to lose him. He is a great man. He might even still see his republic someday, if he can only live through this. He could help birth that republic, he could be remembered in paintings and statues like his beloved Lamarque. Someday Grantaire could climb down from a polished frame, and his hand could brush over Enjolras’s face on a canvas as he goes, the closest thing to immortality France can grant. It would be a better republic for it. He would be a better France for it. 

Grantaire grimaces at the tabletop. He is getting as bad as Rousseau was. He finishes his absinthe and pretends he can’t feel blue eyes boring into his back.

* * *

All the same, the day the barricades rise he is standing with his brothers de l’ABC, a musket in his hand and a cockade on his chest and just enough wine in his belly to steady his hands. 

He can hardly do otherwise; they are not France’s boys, this was a fallacy. He is Enjolras’s France. Why else would Enjolras have been able to have woken him?   
  
It will be over soon. He will get to rest for a while again, at least.

Enjolras is a good captain, glorious in command, and they are brave men, but the fight is hopelessly one-sided. There is no chance for any of them. Then the first death, a young girl who had nothing to do with this war, and he sees her innocent blood darkening her disguise and cannot watch any longer. While the others wait the night out on their barricade, Graintaire goes back inside, sits down at their old table, and sets to work reachieving the drunken stupor he had gallantly given up.

Enjolras comes in when he’s already made good progress toward said stupor. He goes to check on the dryness of the rescued gunpowder, but then lingers as though there is something he wants to say. 

He doesn’t say it. Grantaire swallows around a roughness the liquor doesn’t seem able to smooth, and speaks first instead.

“You will see this through?” he croaks, staring at the table top.

He can feel Enjolras bristling without looking.    
  
“You would expect me to quit now?” Enjolras says.

“I would beg you to quit now,” Grantaire replies. He takes a deep pull from his wine. “But no, I would not expect it.”

“Why do you have so little faith in us?” Enjolras asks after a moment’s silence. 

Grantaire looks at him reproachfully.

“Know me better by now, at least, than to accuse me of that,” he says. Enjolras, surprise of surprises, shifts uncomfortably, looking chastised. Grantaire flicks a bottle cork on the tabletop and watches it spin. “I have nothing but faith in you, Apollo,” he says anyway, because it ought to be said. “It is your faith in the people I lack.”

“They will rise,” Enjolras insists, raising his chin. Grantaire smiles sadly.    
  
“They will not,” he says.

“You have said these things before.”

“And they still don’t convince you.”

Enjolras shakes his head. Grantaire buries his face in his hands. He feels like a vessel overfull with despair instead of drink. His despair sloshes over the edges of him, drips down the legs of the wobbly chair, pools on the floor of the empty cafe. 

“Grantaire…” hesitates Enjolras.

“What could convince you?” Grantaire bursts, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Who could convince you? Is there anyone?” He pulls his hands from his face and clutches his bottle again, but does not drink. “If your sainted mother walked in that door and begged you to leave here, to live to fight for your precious cause another day, would you listen? What if the Holy Virgin? What if Robespierre, raised from the dead?” He is louder now, and Enjolras takes a step back. “What if Lamarque, come from his fresh grave, told you this was madness and demanded you not throw your life away?”

Grantaire looks up and locks his gaze with the other man’s, and he is all too aware of the furious tears standing in his eyes, there for Enjolras to see and mock. Enjolras does not look inclined to mock. He looks alarmed, if anything.   
  
“What if France himself came to you and told you to stop?” Grantaire says, soft and hoarse.

“Himself?” says Enjolras, Grantaire barely hears him.

“What if France didn’t want your revolution?” he demands. “What If France came to you and said ‘No, don’t do this, this is idiocy.’ I don’t want you to die for me, Enjolras.” 

He drops his chin again, his head lolling and his eyes unfocused somewhere in the vicinity of his bottle. 

“You don’t even really know what revolution looks like,” he says. “Not that little rebellion a couple years ago, but real revolution. You weren’t born yet when the Terror ended. You didn’t meet Robespierre. He was brilliant, but he was… You’re nothing like him.” There is Robespierre’s anger burning in Enjolras’s eyes, yes, but the flames are banked with love and pain, love for a broken country that will not be able to help but love him back even as he chokes on blood. “I wonder if even you would love revolution if you actually saw it,” France mumbles. “The blood… and it wasn’t the rich bleeding, Apollo. It was the poor— _ l’abaisse  _ you’re such friends of.” The room is spinning. He lays his forehead down on his arm. “If France told you that revolution is Hell, would you finally listen?”

Enjolras does not speak. Grantaire does not lift his head. He will never get through to Enjolras, knows the things he is saying must sound like drunken nonsense, for the face he borrowed from the painting does not look that much older than Enjolras’s. But France feels still the blood running through the gutters of Paris, the weight of stacked stones as the cathedral was first built, the stamping down of the first dirt roads, the footsteps of the first shepherds pressing the grass, and France knows he is so, so old. There is nothing that something as old as he can explain to a boy as young as this.    
  
Funny, then, how he feels nevertheless like a boy about to die too young.   
  
Enjolras says nothing for a long time. Grantaire’s labored breathing slowly calms, his hand relaxes its grip on the neck of the wine bottle and slides to the table.

“Grantaire…” Enjolras says, finally, just as the wine presses Grantaire’s eyelids down too heavily to be opened again. Grantaire sighs into the back of his arm. Enjolras continues. “It’s not about what will do any good,” he says. “We can only save France by being a nation of people who deserve… him. I would rather be France’s dead than France’s coward. And maybe by dying I can help make people more angry than afraid. Do you understand?” Grantaire does not speak. “Grantaire, do you see?”

Grantaire does not respond. His breathing is even and when he leans closer, Enjolras can see he is asleep.

Enjolras sighs. He takes off his coat and folds it up, slides it gently under France’s head, and walks quietly out.


End file.
